


the things fate brought us

by two_is_better_than_one



Series: when fate decides [1]
Category: Doctor Who RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-27
Updated: 2014-09-07
Packaged: 2018-01-26 17:12:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 10,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1696058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/two_is_better_than_one/pseuds/two_is_better_than_one
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The System laid out your life for you, and it eliminated the heartbreak that, according to Alex’s history books, had been prevalent in the time before The System had begun. Apparently, before The System, people would spend forever looking for the person they were meant to be with, and still not find them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. this ain’t an ordinary love

When Alex Kingston was thirteen years old and her curly hair could not be stopped from frizzing, she took a black pen and crossed out the name that was printed on her right wrist in clinical-looking text.  The twelve little letters, the ones that announced the name of the man she would one day fall in love with, the name of her soul mate, were obliterated with a simple ballpoint and three minutes of time.

They came back again with a squirt of soap and some not-so vigorous scrubbing, upon her father’s request.

“Honestly, Alexandra.” He rumbled, his German accent lilting. “You can’t just do things like that. What is he going to think when you meet him one day, and he learns that you crossed his name out, once upon a time?”

She didn’t understand her father’s obsession with The System. It was deserving of capital letters, because it was the only rational thing that seemed to happen in the mad world that they lived in. Every child, on the day of the birth, had a name written on the inside of their right wrist. It had been that way for centuries before her birth, and as her father kindly reminded her every day, it would be there for centuries afterwards. The System, he argued, was eternal.

Her mother was nice, and called The System by a different name – fate. Fate handed out the name of the person you were meant to be with, the one who was your perfect other half. It was your job to find them, but it was good enough for most that they had a name to begin with. The System was even so kind to do one more thing. Every person, like clockwork, on the day of their eighteenth birthday, would wake up with the first words their soul mate would say to them neatly printed beneath their soul mate’s name on their wrist. It was almost too easy.

Even though her name for it was slightly nicer, Alex’s mother still believed in The System. Any refusal to follow its rules was absurd and irrational. The System laid out your life for you, and it eliminated the heartbreak that, according to Alex’s history books, had been prevalent in the time before The System had begun. Apparently, before The System, people would spend forever looking for the person they were meant to be with, and still not find them. People would get married more than once. Her parents both called the act of divorce vile, and a crime against The System.

It didn’t take long for Alex to realize, even at the ripe young age of thirteen, that her parents were bloody bigots. They had it easy. They had grown up three doors down from each other, not even realizing that they were destined to be together until they accidentally broke a fire hydrant – a ‘how we met’ story they told with pride at least six times a day.

The result of The System, for them, was a happy life with three daughters and a marriage that was fifteen years old but still going strong. Alex, being the oldest of the three children, was expected to emulate her parents’ love story. She was supposed to find her soul mate when she was young, she was supposed to settle down, and she was supposed to have two and a half children, a white picket fence, and a Golden Retriever.

She was not supposed to cross out her soul mate’s name with a pen. Which was, in a way, precisely why she did it. She didn’t want to be defined by The System. She wanted a choice. Besides, even if she did decide to find the mystery man whose name was on her wrist, wouldn’t _knowing_ take all the fun out of it? She almost wished for the time before The System, in which there was the heady rush of falling in love without knowing whether or not it would work out. Inside the isolated bubbles that were made from the names on their wrists, the answer was obvious. If it felt like love, it probably wasn’t, unless their name was printed on your wrist, and your name was on theirs - then it was most definitely love, no doubt about it.

Determined to defy what her parents held so dear, Alex continued to black the name out in pen. Every morning when she sat on the school bus, her best friend Jennifer would hold her wrist steady so she could create a neat little box around the letters, and together they would color the golden skin around the name black. Then, during sixth period, two minutes before the last bell rang, Alex would run to the bathroom and scrub off the black ink with the watery school soap and the icy cold water of the girl’s bathroom. Her parents were never the wiser to her little ploy.

When the morning of Alex’s eighteen birthday came, she ignored her wrist, determined not to read the words. When she went onto the school bus, she looked away as Jen rolled her eyes and heaved a heavy sigh, but carefully hid the words on her best friend’s wrist with navy blue ink.

That was a futile effort, of course, because in order to evade her parent’s ire, during sixth period that day, Alex went to the bathroom, and began to scrub at her wrist. Chewing her lip as she watched the water turn dark blue and then swirl down the drain, she pondered closing her eyes as letters slowly became visible, forming words, and then, slowly, a sentence, then two.

_Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing._

Standing in the bathroom with freezing water running over the now-revealed words, Alex furrowed her eyebrows. The words were familiar, but she couldn’t seem to figure out why. As the last bell of the day rang, she still stood in the bathroom, staring down at the words that would once be said to her by her soul mate. It was another five minutes before she finally managed to get herself to move, and she returned to her darkened classroom with an apologetic look to her teacher before she grabbed her things and left the school.

The words continued to roll around in her brain, but she resolutely ignored them until she was able to sit down at her computer and type them into a Google search.

To Kill A Mockingbird. It was considered a classic across the pond. She had read it in her American literature class, and if she wasn’t mistaken, her copy of it still sat on her bookshelf, barely touched other than for when it was absolutely necessary for her studies.

Slowly, Alex made her way over to the shelf, and pulled the book off gingerly, reverently. She spent the rest of her night ignoring her homework, flipping through the book instead, searching for the words that would one day change her life. When she found them, she took the same pen that she had used to cross the words off of her wrist that morning, and put a shaky underline beneath the quote, folding down the top corner of the page and creasing it smoothly before setting the book aside and laying back against her pillows.

Her dreams were full of handsome American men, borrowing another’s words because they could not explain how much they loved to read, or how they had learned to love breathing.


	2. is my life already scripted?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> By the time he had learned the word ostracized, Matt knew its meaning all too well. Everyone had a name on their wrist. In his ten years of life, he had never once met another person without one.

Matt Smith was a member of the group that the world called The Fateless. When he had been born and they had checked his wrist for a name, it was empty. They had waited a few days, just in case his flushed red newborn skin was hiding a few pale markings. The first day crawled by, then a week, and it became evident at the age of one month that, since not even the faintest traces of black had begun on his wrist, he was doomed to waiting for his soul mate to come to him, since he could not go to her without her name.

His parents were, all in all, very supportive of him and his Fateless status. It wasn’t a big deal, they insisted again and again, even when he came home from his first day of primary school sobbing because he was the only kid in his classroom without ink adorning his wrist. By the time he had learned the word ostracized, Matt knew its meaning all too well. _Everyone_ had a name on their wrist. In his ten years of life, he had never once met another person without one.

That lasted until he was sixteen, and the girl who sat across the classroom in his English class had a wrist that was conspicuously blank, as well. Her name was Annabelle, and she was beautiful. Her teeth were crooked and her hair was mousy brown, and everyone else said she was ugly, but to Matt, she was beautiful. She was like him, and for the first time in his life, he had hope. Annabelle became his center of gravity, and every time there was an English project, they were a pair. They became a hyphenate; Matt-and-Annabelle. The two Fateless children, finally with a fate – to love each other when no one else could.

Then one day, Annabelle came into English class with a smile that burned out the sun and blinded anyone near to it. The day before, at the grocery store, a girl with teal hair and whiskey eyes had called out her name, and the world had become the two of them. The Fateless girl had a fate, then, with the girl with Annabelle’s name on her forearm. The Fateless boy was left alone, heartbroken. Once, he had had someone who understood what it was like to be alone in a world where everyone was together, but then she had betrayed him by falling in love.

It was cruel, because he couldn’t help but be happy for her anyways.

It was only after Annabelle that Matt began actively seeking out other Fateless. He ended up finding quite a few of them, and by the time he turned seventeen, he no longer felt like an outcast. In London alone there were seventeen Fateless; the city had the next-to-largest Fateless count, second only to Beijing’s twenty-two. Among the Fateless were a skinny man named David, whose fluffy brunette hair fascinated Matt endlessly, and a scruffy teenager named Arthur, who played love songs on his guitar when he got a little too hopeless about his empty wrist.

A girl named Nina used to come to the meetings they held two Saturdays a month, and then one day, she stopped. Matt had asked why, but it was only when he saw her obituary in the paper that he realized she had filled up the empty space with something more substantial. Nina had wished so hard for her wrist to be stained black that she had stained it red. What sickened Matt was not the suicide, but everyone’s reaction to it. They crooned about the poor girl’s soul mate, instead of feeling sorry for pushing her away because she did not have the natural tattoo everyone was born with. They brushed off the symptoms of depression prior to her death that David had pointed out, foisting them off instead upon sorrow that she had not yet found the man she was destined to be with.

Their system was flawed in every sense of the word. At least, that was what Matt thought. A girl that he had sat with and talked with and held long, intimate conversations with had killed herself because she could not conform to the expectations of a system she didn’t control. It didn’t seem fair. Following Nina’s death, David began to write a book on the fault lines of the world they lived in, but quickly stopped when he realized that it was only the sixteen Fateless that saw anything wrong with it.

Following David’s spectacular book failure, Arthur decided to put aside his guitar, and when he finished high school, he went on to college to become a geneticist, intent on studying whether or not there was a genetic compound that some people simply lacked that caused them to become one of the Fateless. Matt donated three pints of blood to the cause across the span of a year, eager to find out what was _wrong_ with him.

Evidently, whatever had happened with the name of his soul mate not showing up had been a fluke. Even though David was twenty three, he didn’t have a quote on his wrist, nor did Arthur, who was nineteen, or Nina, who had been twenty six when she had died. None of the other Fateless had a quote, either.

But when Matt woke up on the morning of his eighteenth birthday, there it was, clear as day. A quote on his arm, with a neat space left for a name that wasn’t there. He wanted to laugh, and he wanted to cry, and he wanted to celebrate, but he also wanted to hide. He wasn’t a full Fateful, but he wasn’t a full Fateless, either. He was stuck in between. His parents once again took the twist in the story of their son’s life in stride, and after extensive digging, they found what he was called.

Mid-Fate. It sounded so ugly, like he was suspended in fate, unable to move of his own accord. Matt quickly discovered that however isolating being a Fateless had been, being Mid-Fate was even worse. There were only eleven known cases in the world: Anatoli, a blond Russian boy; Claire, a petite French girl; Dennis, a strong Australian boy; Iris, a raven-haired Filipino girl; Jarrod, a well-muscled Canadian boy; Lauana, a stunning Brazilian girl; Luka, a skinny Croatian boy; Temi, a wide-eyed African boy; Thomas, a stocky American boy; Yasuko, a brown-eyed Japanese girl; and Matt himself. They had established a small online forum that, like Annabelle had, quickly became Matt’s focus. He found that Anatoli was funny and liked to climb mountains and Yasuko thought that noodles were disgusting, and the ten other Mid-Fates became so much like family that Matt almost didn’t mind how horrid the name sounded.

It was on this forum that Matthew Smith found a picture of Alex Kingston, which Thomas had posted alongside the caption ‘Women from Matt’s homeland are pretty sweet looking. :P’

On her wrist was a neat black box where the name of her soul mate should have been, and underneath it, a navy blue box where the words he was going to say to her should have been located. Matt wondered vaguely if she had done it on purpose, or if it was a measure taken to insure her privacy.

It wasn't until four years later, when he was twenty two, that Matt would see a photo of Alex Kingston again. That time, her wrist was not covered in blackness, and Matt squinted at the photo. He thought – but no, that couldn’t be true? He leaned in closer to his computer screen, and his breath caught in his throat. Yes - it _was_ true…

It was his name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your overwhelming response to the first chapter! I enjoyed reading every comment, and I'm sorry that I couldn't respond to each of you in turn. If you enjoyed this chapter equally, or even if you hated it, please feel free to tell me in the comments, because everything you say will be used to make this story the best it can be. Also, love always to Mina, who sat on Skype with me for an hour reading this and offering her infinite wisdom to improve this chapter. <3


	3. i need to find you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe he didn’t want her, and that was why he had taken so long. Maybe he thought she was too good for him. If that were the case, Alex would probably cry when she met him, then slap him, and then kiss him silly.

Alex had, at the time of her first movie premier, almost forgotten about her obsession with crossing out the name on her wrist. She had not totally let it slip her mind, though, and had placed a thin layer of ink over the name, and the quote. It had been a hasty scribble on top of the letters, so if anyone cared to decipher it, they probably could. It became less and less important to her that she keep the name blacked out; she was twenty three years old and she had yet to even catch word of someone who was named something vaguely close to Matthew Smith, so he probably didn’t exist. That was a scary thought.

Though, Alex figured, if he did exist, and he really cared enough for her that he was to be called her soul mate one day, he'd end up coming to her. It was, after all, the responsibility of the males to make sure The System kept running smoothly year after year. Alex thought that was a tad bit misogynistic, but she was in no position to argue, considering that not having anyone to take up her time was causing her acting career to go zooming upwards.

There had been RADA, which was, in a word, hell. Alex could think of two things (and only two things) that were good about her college experience. The first was that Jen was with her, and being around Jen seemed to make everything better. The second was that, in her final year at the school, a French exchange student named Claire had been put in her class. Alex had taken the scared freshman under her wing. For once in her life, Alex had an outlet on which to use all of her secondary school French knowledge. Claire enjoyed speaking in her mother language, as well, though she laughed when Alex fumbled on the smooth sounds, defecting instead to the harsh German consonants. The two became fast friends, and though Alex did eventually have to leave RADA and Claire had to fly back to France, they remained in touch. Alex had even texted her the day before the premier, griping about her soul mate and his lack of appearance in her life.

Then, all of a sudden, she was an adult, and not long after that, she was famous. Well, relatively famous. The whole world was relative, though, so Alex would take 'relatively famous' over 'not famous at all'. Her first movie, the one that elevated her above the ‘not famous at all’ line, was about a young woman who made her living selling glass cups. Alex didn't really understand what the writer, or the director, for that matter, was going for with it, but it was a paycheck. As a relatively, rather than solidly, famous actress, she would take it.

 The premier, she thought, would be a chore. She wasn’t one who liked having their picture taken very much, and she thought all the glitz was rather excessive when there were other, more important things that money could be spent on. The movie, after all, was meant to support some charity that Alex had never heard of. If the producers had wanted to walk the walk, they could’ve skipped the five-course meal and gone instead straight to the showing. All of those thoughts quickly flew out of Alex’s head, though, when she first stepped onto the red carpet. She was star struck in more ways than one.

It was the day of her first premier, after she had sufficiently recovered from the glamour of it all, that Alex met Ralph Fiennes, and that made standing and posing for photos worth every torturous minute. She was absolutely, positively sure that the name on her wrist was wrong, because Ralph was...well, radiant. She could not imagine anyone else who could make her insides light up like he did, and he became a solid acquaintance of hers as they continued to attend more premiers and other dances and galas together. Not as a couple, of course (that's what Alex had to keep telling herself), but together, most certainly. When he was around, she tended to keep her wrist more securely hidden.

Alex thought that perhaps if she ignored the name for long enough and kept covering it, maybe one day it would miraculously change and then she would be able to fall into Ralph's arms and be happy. She was rather sick of waiting for Matthew Smith at that point – it had been another five years since her first premier, and she was beginning to feel…old. She was twenty eight and not a single step closer to meeting her soul mate than she had been when she was eighteen.

Maybe he didn’t want her, and that was why he had taken so long. Maybe he thought she was too good for him. If that were the case, Alex would probably cry when she met him, then slap him, and then kiss him silly. In order to do the two other things, though, Alex had to meet the bloke, and that had yet to happen. She was beginning to think it never would, and she was becoming desperate.

There was a movie premier (her seventh or eighth, at that point) that she attended with Ralph, and she violated the first rule of The System: do not sleep with anyone who is not your soul mate. In fact, she didn't just violate the rule; she blew it to smithereens. But it felt nice, his sweaty skin against hers, his rough palms kneading and his soft lips suckling and everything feeling warm and wet and brilliant. Her green dress was on the floor and his tuxedo bottoms were pooled around his ankles, and suddenly she was no longer a virgin. But every moment of it was bliss.

That was the last time she saw Ralph Fiennes. She was told several different stories by several different sources, but one thing was evident: Ralph Fiennes was not the angel he claimed to be, and he did not love her the way she loved him. He was a devil, an utter wanker, a blue-eyed snake – she couldn’t even find the words to describe how vile he was – and Alex was angry at herself. She was so, so angry, and couldn't even fathom why.

 She should be angry at Ralph, who had taken advantage of her, or Matthew Smith, who still remained a faceless stranger, even when he should have been there, her knight in shining armor. She couldn't bring herself to be angry at Ralph, though, for whatever reason. Her soft spot for him only served to further her anger. Matthew Smith - well, he was meant to be with her, wasn't he? The System never gave a time guarantee, nor did it promise that they'd always find each other. Either way, she could not bear to be angry at the man she was going to fall in love with, even if she tried to persuade herself it was his fault in the first place.

Instead, she was angry at herself.

Self-punishment became her modus operandi – anything she wanted, she denied herself, and everything she didn’t want, she made herself do. It was her only way of working through the emotions that threatened to eat her alive. Her self-directed anger over Ralph had yet to cease after a year of pining and hurt feelings, and it was simpler to run for days than it was to sit down and face the loneliness that gnawed at her insides. She lost weight at a frightening pace, becoming no more than skin and bones. Claire, when she returned to Britain after spending several years in France, reprimanded her for her sorry state and tried to force her to eat (seeing as she had stopped), but it didn’t help much. She still remained skeletal.

The self-imposed starvation, but even more frightening to those who knew her was that she left her wrist uncovered. It was a habit that all of them, including Alex’s parents, had come to accept. Yet ink did not mar Matthew Smith's name, and only Alex knew why. She held onto the hope that somehow, some way, he would find her. Maybe in a picture on the cover of a magazine, or maybe he would see her on the streets. Maybe he would find her.

He had to find her, didn't he?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A wild update appears! I hope everyone enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it, and I also hope that you don't mind these first few chapters are both fact-dumps and very short. As always, thanks to Mina, who helped me take this from 750 words of shit into the chapter you just read. :)


	4. i have died every day waiting for you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And so the day went on. It was a flurry of writing and drinking tea, and briefly, a break for lunch. He was rather satisfied with the amount of progress he had made on his play by the time he paused long enough to make a cheese sandwich and pour himself a glass of milk.

When he woke up that morning, he was not expecting to meet his soul mate. That was reflected rather obviously in his choice of dress. He pulled on a loose fitting gray jumper and a pair of jeans, and that was that. He ate a bowl of cereal and drank a glass of milk, and then retreated to his study to begin work on the third act of the play he had been writing since he graduated college the year before.

Writing articles for newspapers, and small satire pieces for journals or magazines, had provided him with a steady enough income, but this play was, in a way, his baby. He was certain that once he published it, he would be home free. He’d have a name for himself, and a nice little nest egg so he could move out of his four-room flat and into an actual house.

Wishful thinking, his friends called it. Ambitious intentions, his parents said. The only one who thought he wasn’t totally bonkers was Anatoli, and for that Matt was grateful. If the Russian hadn’t given him some sort of encouragement, he probably would have quit after the third scene. That had been his first experience with writer’s block, and it had not been pretty.

And so the day went on. It was a flurry of writing and drinking tea, and briefly, a break for lunch. He was rather satisfied with the amount of progress he had made on his play by the time he paused long enough to make a cheese sandwich and pour himself a glass of milk. He turned on his phone, and was surprised to find a flurry of messages from Claire.

_Smithers, where are you?_

_Matt, seriously. Are you at home?_

_I’m going to assume you’re at home._

_I’m in England for the week. I’m in a bookshop with that tea and coffee place you’re always telling me about._

_They have a book you wrote!_

Matt frowned.

_I’ve never written a book. – M_

It was a few minutes before he got a text back from Claire, but he was so intrigued by someone publishing a book under his name that he couldn’t bear to turn off his phone so he could go back to writing something that was actually his.

 _Who do you think wrote it, then?_ Claire inquired.

_Dunno. Smith isn’t exactly an uncommon last name, though. –M_

_Meet me there? Please?_

Matt sighed, but shot a quick text in response saying he would. He walked out the door long enough to ascertain that he would definitely be needing a scarf, and ducked back inside. It took him a bit to find one that was suitable for going out in public wearing, but when he did, he tied it carefully around his neck and then ducked back into the crisp November evening.

The book store Claire spoke of was within walking distance of his flat, and Matt figured that it would be a waste of petrol to drive when he could walk. He regretted that decision when he was about a block away from his flat, but by that time he was committed to the journey (and to being environmentally friendly). Besides, by the time he realized that, it was only another block to go until the book shop, so it would be just as far there was it would be to go back home.

When he finally ducked into the book store, the warmth and the smell of old books was welcome after the cold and the smell of frost on the air. He unwound the scarf from around his neck, wrapping it instead around his arm so it curled around bicep like some odd charcoal colored snake.

Upon his first inspection of the book store, he did not see Claire. It was a rather large shop, though, and he began to explore between the pillars of nonfiction autobiographies where the French girl liked to hide, often curled up with a tome about some long-dead physicist. Honestly, who read about physicists for enjoyment? Once Matt had had to sit through Claire’s three hour lecture about Schrodinger’s cat, and it was an experience he would never forget. It was cruel and unusual punishment. He supposed that was the price he had to pay for being friends with a physicist, though.

When his perusal through the nonfiction aisle returned no results, Matt wondered back to the in-house coffee shop. Maybe Claire was waiting for him there? He ordered a tea and began to sip at it as he looked around, seeing if he could find Claire from his new vantage point. He drew another blank, and let out a huffy sigh as he finished his tea and threw the Styrofoam cup into the garbage can. Maybe Claire had been talking about a different book shop?

_Where are you? - M_

Claire never responded to the text. Matt put on a mock pout and stood up from the stool he was sitting on, intent on finding Claire and making her see that he did not appreciate her abandonment, or her wasting of his time when he had been on a roll with his play writing.

A quick comb of the store, like his other inspections, yielded no results, and Matt began to wonder what exactly Claire was playing at. If she had told him to go to the book store, he would have done it gladly, but calling him and then making him play some twisted game of hide and seek was not cool. His walking around the store soon became stomping, and after three circuits, eventually Matt gave up. Claire wasn’t responding to his texts, and she obviously wasn’t in the store, unless she was in the girl’s bathroom, and he _wasn’t_ going to check there.

After much deliberation, Matt decided he was not yet ready to return to the biting wind, and decided to browse through his preferred section of the book store instead. American literature was a beautiful, beautiful thing, he thought as he browsed through the aisles. Sure, Britain had birthed Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen, Orwell, and Christie, but America had given the world Poe, Dickinson, Frost, Eliot, Twain, and (Matt’s personal favorite) Lee.

As in Harper Lee, who just so happened to be the author of the book that a woman was reading, her back propped up against a bookshelf. Matt beamed at her, though her face remain buried in the book.

He cleared his throat, and began to quote softly. “Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait on this update - I was told that perhaps four chapters in four days would be overwhelming to new readers, but I guess no one else has started, so here you go. As always, for Mina.


	5. words come awkwardly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They walked back towards the café, and Alex was beginning to think ‘awkward’ would be the word of the day, and perhaps the word of their relationship.

Shocked, Alex blinked up at the man who was standing in front of her, casually leaning against a bookshelf full of Edgar Allan Poe's poetry. She said the first words that popped into her head, unable to process her shock in any other way. "You're not American." She blurted dumbly, continuing to stare at him. This was Matthew Smith - this was the man she had waited her whole life for?

Well, that explained why he wasn't around when the whole Ralph fiasco occurred. He was probably still in primary school at the time. The word cougar wormed its way uncomfortably into Alex's brain, and she tried to brush it off, tried to do anything, say anything to this man, this _boy_ , who was supposed to be her soul mate.

"No, I'm not." He said matter-of-factly. "If I'm not mistaken, your name is Alex Kingston, yes?"

She managed a nod, and after clearing her throat several times, spoke up. "You're Matthew Smith." Unlike him, she didn't phrase it as a question. He was Matthew Smith. He was the one she had betrayed by sleeping with Ralph, but looking at him, she felt nothing at all. No guilt, no sorrow, no anger, not even happiness because he was finally, blessedly, here. An awkward silence captured the space between them, and Alex had no intention to break it. He was the one who had totally blindsided her, and he was the one who was making it awkward.

That’s what she told herself to keep utter hysteria from setting in. She felt like she was suffocating, and finally, she had to force herself to close the book that was still lying open on her knees. He had actually quoted the fucking book. Who even did that?

“You’re not pleased.” Matthew stated, using the same knowing tone as he had before. She didn’t want to admit that she was more than disappointed, but she didn’t want to lie to him, either, so silence continued to dominate her.

“Do you want to talk about this?” He prodded gently. She mustered up the energy to respond, nodding once, shortly. She scrambled up from her seated position on the floor, tucking the book under her arm as she did so. She avoided meeting his eyes, afraid of what she would see there. Total awe, maybe? That would be awkward due to lack of reciprocation. Nothing? That would be even more awkward, because then they’d probably be the first couple that the system had gotten all wrong. Indifference? That was the one she would hope for, if she had to look into his eyes. At least then they wouldn’t be at a total stalemate, but she wouldn’t be uncomfortable due to his adoration.

They walked back towards the café, and Alex was beginning to think ‘awkward’ would be the word of the day, and perhaps the word of their relationship. Their probably short lived relationship. He seemed to sense her apprehension, and wasn’t making any moves to alleviate it. That, at least, she was glad for. He wasn’t fake, then, and that was something she could respect after living in a world of fakers ever since she entered drama school.

When he sat down, she sat opposite him, and was surprised that when she met his eyes, none of the emotions she had expected were displayed there. All that there was there was curiosity. He wanted to know more about her? It wasn’t like any of her failings were more than a Google search away. Oddly enough, though, Alex felt the same way. She wanted to know why he read American literature, and why he could quote To Kill A Mockingbird. She wanted to know why he spent his free time in bookstores, and why he had such a stiff, proper-sounding name when it didn’t fit his oddly-shaped face and floppy hair at all. She wanted to know why The System had thought they’d be a good match.

He made the first move. Crossing his gangly legs and reclining in the chair as if he was relaxed (how could he be relaxed!? She was freaking out!), he surveyed her with nonjudgmental eyes.

“Before we begin, you might want to see this.” He said, voice dull. He sounded…ashamed? It wasn’t quite the right word, but he wasn’t exactly enthusiastic as he presented his wrist. Alex assumed, at first, that when he flipped his wrist so she could see it, he was just assuring her that they were, indeed, soul mates, and he wasn’t some psychopath who had managed to find the information online.

It was just the opposite. His wrist was partially blank. Her name wasn’t there, but her words (God, those were stupid first words), were. Chewing her lip, Alex blinked at the newly acquired information. She opened her mouth for the first time since she had stated his name, clearing her throat uncomfortably as she did so.

“That’s fine.” She said. She was surprised that it felt truthful in her mouth, not like the bitter tang of the lies she was sure she was going to have to tell to him later to keep their relationship alive. It was fine that his wrist was devoid of her name. In fact, it was probably a good thing. The paparazzi wouldn’t be able to harass him, and he would be relatively safe from anyone else who might wish her soul mate harm – crazed fans came to mind, but she was sure that there were more avenues in which she was disliked that she couldn’t think of right now, staring at his hazel eyes.

Oh, fuck. She’d been staring. And he was staring back. When she jerked her gaze downwards, his moved on, too, but not with the same clumsiness hers had. For a clumsy body, he certainly was less clumsy socially than she was. He seemed to be taking all of this in stride, and she was…not.

“You can call me Matt.” He offered as she stared down at the table. “Only my mother calls me Matthew, and that’s only when I’ve done something to make her angry.”

“Alright.” Alex said. Matt Smith felt better in her head than Matthew Smith, and it seemed to fit him better, too. There was one of her questions answered.

“…Are we going to have to do that thing where we answer twenty questions about ourselves? Because that’s not really my style.” Matt informed her after another pregnant pause. Alex offered him a tiny half smile.

“It’s not really mine, either.” She agreed. “I don’t know. This is just –” She cut herself off, searching for the right word.

“Awkward?” He suggested helpfully. She chuckled softly, but nodded.

“Awkward.” She agreed.

“Well, maybe we can be that awkward couple you see at _every_ social gathering.” Matt suggested.

“The one that doesn’t know whether to hug or kiss hello and goodbye?” Alex added, smile growing.

“Yup, that’ll be us.” Matt grinned at her.

Being the awkward couple was suddenly so much more appealing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooh, lookie, I updated! Sorry for this one taking slightly longer than the others. I have a reason, but it sounds petulant, so I won't say why. P: Thanks to Mina for encouraging me to put my petulant reason aside and write this~ Also, like I said before, I hope short chapters are alright with you all. :)


	6. i'm wonderin bout the road ahead of me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He felt sorry for Alex as he considered it further. She had insisted that his blank wrist was fine, and he had believed her, but it didn’t seem like something Matt would be fine with if it didn’t happen to him.

Meeting her had been nothing like had expected, and as Matt ambled home, his hands tucked deep in his pockets to protect them from the cold, he wondered what on earth he was getting into. What were _they_ getting into? He was supposed to be in love with her, be her soul mate, but according to his wrist, she was not meant entirely for him, or perhaps he not entirely for her. He ducked his head against the wind, sighing heavily. He wished that he was not one of eleven, especially when the other ten had yet to succeed as he had. If he was one of seven billion, like everyone else was, then perhaps he wouldn’t be pondering whether or not he was making the right decision.

A part of him told him he was. She was familiar, she was beautiful, and she was…Alex. The other part of him, the part that screamed at him to run, told him the familiarity with her was one he shared with every other human being who had seen _ER_. Her entire life was splayed across the papers, and he was guilty of reading more than one gossip column. The beauty was undeniable, the voice whispered, but was it his alone? Of course it wasn’t. She would never be his alone, because she was famous, and he was not. She was Alex, yes, but it was _because_ she was Alex that he should just leave the little slip of paper in his coat in the pocket, left to get buried beneath a million other things.

Walking was doing nothing to help his frantically churning brain. His psyche was desperately trying to work through something, and it commanded him to curl up on a ball and stay there until he had made his decision. But he couldn’t. He had to get home.

He sighed into the inside of his scarf and continued plowing through the headwind, which had done nothing but pick up since he had stepped out of the book store. He still wondered, vaguely, what had happened to Claire, but decided not to push it. Simple lack of communication, or maybe her phone died. Alex was the more important conundrum on his mind, even as he finally, mercifully, reached his flat, shouldering open the door and slipping in before the wind could tug it shut.

Sitting down at his computer, his first impulse was to announce to the world that he, against all odds, had met his soul mate. He didn’t care how the news got out, but he wanted it _out_. He reigned himself in, though. It would be disrespectful to Alex to make that sort of announcement without her permission. Thus, instead of writing a novel about how the day had took a turn for the best, Matt contented himself with browsing through the conversations that had been posted during the hour or so he was away, most of them between Anatoli and Luka.

The only problem with foreign friends, Matt chuckled to himself, was that he didn’t understand a word they said. Anatoli had a good grasp on English, but Luka’s was a little less firm, so the pair often spoke in Luka’s home language of Croatian. How Anatoli learned Croatian was beyond Matt, but he learned not to ask when it came to the Russian.

Scrolling through pages of unfamiliar characters and words, Matt was hit by a sudden revelation. What was he supposed to tell his parents? Surely Alex wouldn’t object to that? He sighed, twisting his mouth to one side. Telling his father was as good as telling his mother, which was as good as telling his sister, which was as good as telling his sister’s friends, and…well, that would spiral out of control, and probably end up on the Internet, quickly. He would be taking a vow of silence on the subject of Alex, then.

The rest of his day was spent rather listlessly. The little voice that commanded him to write was uncharacteristically quiet, and he suspected it had something to do with the fact he was _still_ trying to figure Alex, and how he and Alex would even work, out. He had been polite to her, friendly even, to try to encourage her to come out from behind the walls she had seemed to have built up around herself, probably because of her life as a celebrity, but it didn’t really seem to work until their conversation about the hopeless awkwardness of their own relationship.

He wondered if this was what love was. Furiously analyzing every minute detail? That seemed to him more like obsession. He tried to conjure up some sort of memory of what his sister had been like the day she had first met her soul mate, and when he found one, he was disappointed. She had not been unsure of them, and what they were supposed to be. _She,_ he reminded himself bitterly, was born with his name on her wrist, and her name was on his. She had been glowing with happiness, and didn’t seem to have a single worry.

He felt sorry for Alex as he considered it further. She had insisted that his blank wrist was fine, and he had believed her, but it didn’t seem like something Matt would be fine with if it didn’t happen to him. It was wrong, and it went against everything that fate said should happen to people in the day and age that they lived in. He was an anomaly, he was a freak. And she had to love him anyways.

He shuddered at the thought. She would not love him fully, completely, would she? There would always be that niggling in the back of her head that he was imperfect, flawed. What did he have to offer her? An unfinished play, youth that made him naïve and prone to mistakes, and a four room flat on the second floor of a worn-down complex? He certainly wouldn’t take the deal. His cautious optimism was draining away, replaced by what apathy. Matt thought apathy, at the very least, was safe. He would not care if she didn’t love him. And if, by some miracle, she did, he would be able to pull himself back up onto the level of that guarded hopefulness.

He wouldn’t hold his breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all of your comments on the last chapter! It was exciting, I know. Just a heads up, this week and next week I'll be studying for and taking finals, and next Thursday I get to go see Alex Kingston in Macbeth!! Just so you know why I might not update. C: Thanks to Mina, and all of you!


	7. and i will wait for you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So lost in her thoughts was Alex that she didn’t notice she had been standing, ready to exit her house, for nearly ten minutes.
> 
> Shit. She was going to be late.

She was seeing him again and she was more worried than she thought she should be. It was only another coffee date, though not at the book store this time. They were meeting at a coffee bar near her house. That inspired an odd thought – what sort of Briton in their right mind preferred coffee over tea? She would seriously need to reevaluate their relationship if he didn’t like tea. They simply _couldn’t_ be soul mates if he didn’t like tea.

She knew she was avoiding a lot of thoughts by focusing on his preference of hot drink, and she reprimanded herself quietly as she bent down to tie her scuffed-up trainers. When she slipped on her jacket, she paused, sighing. She buried her head in her hands, groaning softly. She was not ready for this in any way, shape, or form. She didn’t know what a _date_ was supposed to be like. The closest she had ever come to a date was when _he_ had pulled her into an abandoned closet and had his way with her. That was not something she wanted to dwell on, especially considering eventually she would have to tell Matt about him and, God, how was she supposed to tell him about Ralph?

When was she supposed to tell him about Ralph?

Now? Today?

She couldn’t do that. She simply didn’t have the strength to. She was still getting over it herself, after all these years, and as soon as she dragged him into the equation, things would get so much more complicated. She had thought he would make everything alright, but he hadn’t. Instead of making her feel like Ralph was not worth another thought, guilt consumed her, and she wished she could take another shower to scrub away Ralph’s hands, still ghosting over her. She shivered, but straightened. Ralph, Matt, was there any difference?

Well, yes, there was. She was attracted to Ralph. Matt…She wasn’t. He was so damn _young_. She couldn’t see past that. That was what her thoughts kept coming back to. They were meant to be together – that’s what was supposed to happen – but she couldn’t even find a spark of anything other than friendship. She would very much like to be Matthew Smith’s friend, but perhaps, her wrist had lied. She couldn’t see spending her life with this man. She couldn’t see curling up next to him at night, she couldn’t see walking down the aisle towards him…She just couldn’t see it.

The rational part of her reminded her that love needed time. The less rational part argued that this was her soul mate, and soul mates were supposed to love each other from the moment they met. That’s what had happened to her friends, at least. When she attended weddings of school mates, they’d always make sappy speeches about how they knew they were meant to be from the start. She would not be making any sappy speeches.

So lost in her thoughts was Alex that she didn’t notice she had been standing, ready to exit her house, for nearly ten minutes.

Shit. She was going to be late.

Rushing out of the house, she tucked a cap over her mess of curls, hoping no paparazzi would be hanging around today. She really didn’t need the added drama of having to go public with her barely-there relationship. It was still in its embryonic stages, and if their first meeting was anything to go by, then perhaps it would never grow into an actual courtship with the intent of marriage.

Once again, the rational part of her brain had to give its two cents. It protested that her pessimistic attitude was doing nothing to help with the current uneasiness between her and Matthew, and though it was true, Alex didn’t want to admit it.

She rushed into the coffee shop, five minutes late, and quickly spotted Matt, sitting with his chin rested on his fist in a back corner of the café. She was about to make a thousand apologies for her lateness when she slid into the booth, but was stunned into silence by the hot cup of tea resting in front of her. He had ordered for both of them. Lost for words, Alex took an anxious gulp of tea. That did nothing to help her predicament. She was shocked further by the fact it was the same kind of tea she normally drank.

“Good morning.” Matt offered as she sat, stunned.

“Oh, good morning.” She said, faking a smile. Any sort of progress they had made in the book store was erased by those three words. Matt removed his elbow from its position on the table, staring down at his lap at her brisk, almost blasé, tone.

“What have you been doing lately?” It had only been three days since they had last seen each other, and Alex would felt like the question was more a courtesy than an actual plea for information if it wasn’t Matt who was asking.

She launched into a long and complicated recounting of the filming that she had done the previous night. The story involved a runaway prop pineapple, and over excited child extra, and several hundred pushpins, all of which were rather integral parts of the overall arc. Matt, to his credit, did a good job at not looking totally confused by the winding monologue, and at the end even laughed at the punch line to the entire story.

“And you?” She finally asked after her story was complete, breathless with laughter.

“I finished writing another scene of my play.” He offered meekly, looking up at her.

“You’re a writer?” Alex asked, eyebrows raised. She hadn’t even thought to ask him what his job was.

“Yeah.” He answered, gaze returning to his lap.

“I – I didn’t know that.” She said. Her attempt at starting another conversation about his job, she knew, would be thwarted by his apparent shyness and her inability to do anything without putting her foot in her mouth.

Slowly, they sipped their tea and looked at each other over the rims of their teacups.

“D’you think it’s possible to fall in love with someone you don’t even know?” Matt asked her, echoing her own thoughts.

“I mean, I suppose that’s what people do every day, don’t they?” She said pensively, looking into the murky depths of her tea as if it would give her the answer to her questions.

“That’s what we have to do.” Matt said quietly.

She just nodded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know if this chapter is any good but I spent so much time ruminating on this and basically the summer was so busy that I couldn't even update. Ugh. Sorry. (I'm a bit frustrated.)


	8. come on and kiss the girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’ve been thinking maybe we’ve been approaching this whole relationship thing the wrong way.” She rushed out the words, but Matt heard them anyways.

The first time he kissed her was about two weeks after they met. He was absolutely sure that somehow kissing her would set off some sort of flood of hormones and he’d finally _feel_ something for her. They were tentative friends, sure, but he had thought that maybe they’d become soul mates if they kissed.

Apparently, it didn’t really work that way. No sudden love sprung from a suppressed well deep within him, and there weren’t even sexual undertones. Matt was pretty sure he was the only one on the entire planet that had managed to have a platonic kiss with their soul mate. It wasn’t a bad kiss, though. In fact, it was quite good. He wouldn’t mind kissing her whenever, even if it was just a kiss hello or a kiss goodbye. Her lips were warm and soft and her mouth tasted amazing.

But, he had to chastise himself softly, he didn’t love her. It seemed rude to egg her on with kisses, especially considering the end to nearly _every_ soul mate relationship was the same and he simply wasn’t ready for that. Not with Alex.

The only thing that eased his pain was the fact that the disconnect seemed to be mutual. He would have felt even more awful about his inability to love her romantically if she had been pining after him. He admired her for that, he supposed – she wasn’t going to grovel for something that she couldn’t get. Matt felt rather self-important when thinking that, and he had to shake the thought of the way. His ego wasn’t that big.

And neither was hers. Matt really had to hand it to her; Alex’s attitude about fame was practically ideal. He had no doubts that if he had met Alex Kingston when she was not a television star, he would’ve met practically the same woman, though the latter would be a little less well-off finance-wise. And even though she was still cautious about letting their relationship become new fodder for the presses, she seemed more willing to tell people about it than he would’ve expected. People she trusted, of course, but still, it was nice not to be able to talk about her to someone.

All in all, Alex Kingston was very respectable. She was a good friend. They spent loads of time together. He just couldn’t bring himself to love her.

Hand holding, though? That was fun. The only thing that gave him some sort of hope about the future of their relationship was the fact that her hand slid into his and it felt like he never needed to let go. When they were holding hands, he could almost pretend he loved her.

That brought him back to the fact that he _didn’t_ , though, as every thought invariably did. He had considered a wide spectrum of possibilities; everything from him really loving her and suppressing it due to the trauma being a Fateless had put on him as a child to Fate having finally made a mistake. Millions – no, billions – of people had been matched this way. There was bound to be a flaw somewhere, a fluke. The Fateless weren’t abundant enough to count as the fluke, Matt thought desperately. Maybe it was just wrong.

“Is there ever something you ever think about a lot?” Alex asked, as if she could sense his roiling thoughts. He had almost forgotten that she was there, sitting on his sofa with his feet in her lap. Matt nodded slowly, making a small motion to prompt Alex into whatever her next statement would be. There was never a question like that without further comment on the matter.

“Because, you know, I’ve been thinking…” She glanced at him, wringing her hands. “I’ve been thinking maybe we’ve been approaching this whole relationship thing the wrong way.” She rushed out the words, but Matt heard them anyways.

Well, it did make sense.

“How do you suggest we go about it?” He asked, honestly wondering what she had cooked up to make them fall in love. He didn’t think it would be anything too horrible, knowing Alex, but still, it seemed like (in the movies, at least) situations like this never went well.

“I think we should try to woo each other.” Matt’s muscles relaxed and he let out a breath that he had been holding in the back of his throat. It was a good idea, actually. They seemed to have taken for granted the fact that they were meant to be together – that hadn’t actually been any talk of romantic inclinations, just resignation on account of the fact that they _were_ going to end up together, whether they liked it or not.

He nodded once to show that he agreed, once again lost in his thoughts. It actually astounded him how good of an idea that was – he had taken the whole kissing thing for granted because he knew he’d be kissing Alex Kingston for the rest of his life, because Fate wasn’t wrong. There was no fluke, however much he tried to persuade himself there was. He was just being a Debby Downer.

“Alright,” He said, taking a deep breath. “In that vein, I was wondering if you would be interested in dining with me this Friday night, Miss Kingston.” He had pulled the time out of his arse, and the invitation sounded stilted and way too formal, but it was a start. And it would be the first date they’d had since they drank coffees together a month ago before settling into their odd schedule of visiting each other and watching telly or kissing or doing some other menial task.

“It would be my pleasure, Mister Smith.” Alex said, smiling brightly at him. That was a start, at least.

The two of them went back to watching their television show, one that Alex had guest starred in, as if nothing had happened. A comfortable silence fell over them, and Matt thought that even if he never found it in him to love Alex, he could certainly spend a lifetime being her friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. Sorry for the long wait. Summer was here then it wasn't and now I'm 5 days into my junior year. Crazy. (Sorry about rambling about my life and not the chapter. Please feel free to leave reviews on either subject.)


	9. i'm sorry, believe me, i love you...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She was nervous through their entire date, and for once, it wasn’t the fault of their stumbling relationship or the media’s constant need to keep its eye on her.

She was nervous through their entire date, and for once, it wasn’t the fault of their stumbling relationship or the media’s constant need to keep its eye on her.

It was her parents.

She had mentioned she was going out to her sister, just in passing, and suddenly her parents knew, and then they were asking her to bring him over, and if that wasn’t enough, they were expecting a detailed background on him and his family and his interests and _everything_ about him, as if they needed proof that he was the right one for her. Her wrist should’ve been enough, shouldn’t it? What was bad about that, though, was that she realized she didn’t know anything. She knew he was a writer and she knew how he took his tea and she knew he had played football as a child, but that was it. They were practically strangers.

Alex shifted forward in her seat, picking listlessly at the fish she had ordered as her stomach rolled. There were only so many unobtrusive ways to pick your boyfriend’s brain for information. A small shudder rolled up her spine – she didn’t like the word boyfriend. Matt must have noticed the shiver, because he looked up at her, slightly concerned, but didn’t say anything, probably so he wouldn’t be construed as rude.

Poor Matt. She liked him a lot. He was a sweetheart, and navigated the insane demands of her celebrity status with poise she hadn’t expected of him. When one of the other people in the restaurant had asked for her autograph, he had waved off her apology, insisting it was fine. He was a perfect gentleman, and he was funny, and he was so nice, and that only made her resent herself further for her utter inability to fall in love.

They had talked on the subject more than once. Words like ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ were tossed about, but eventually shot down. They were both trying. That’s why they were on this date, weren’t they? But despite the amazing food and engaging conversation and everything else that seemed to be working for them, they couldn’t do it. She saw it in his eyes, and if her parents hadn’t wanted her to invite him over, she would call the whole thing off. There was no use to them being miserable, or wasting their time with this ‘wooing’.

She was so, so fucked up.

By the time her dessert had come, she had reached two conclusions. One, she was going to tell Matt, now, that her parents wanted to meet him. Or at least as soon as her mouth wasn’t full. She shoveled another bite of cake in to delay the inevitable as she choreographed her every word. Two, she was going to tell him that really, he was fantastic, and she loved him…but not in that way. She needed the right words for that, too.

Swallowing her cake, Alex took a deep breath, and let it out. She was procrastinating, which wasn’t much like her. She needed to get this over with.

“My parents want to meet you.” That came out much more like a death sentence than an invitation to her parents’ house. If she were Matt, she’d be scared.

He swallowed the bite of his cobbler he’d been chewing and nodded once. “Any date they have in mind?” He asked nonchalantly, as if he wasn’t totally killing him inside to be bound to her for any longer than he had to be. Though, she supposed, was there really any other person for him? For the two of them, was it be together or be alone? Alex hoped not. There were couples who weren’t soul mates, weren’t there? She struggled to think of one, but they had to exist. There was no way the world would run if everyone waited for their soul mate to get married.

God, she was useless. She was fucked up and she was useless and her parents would see it, too.

“They said if Sunday worked for you, they’d like to meet you then.” Alex said, dabbing at her mouth with a napkin as she carefully gauged his response. Sunday was only two days away, a bit of a short notice, and maybe he’d be busy, and then she’d be able to say that he didn’t actually need to meet her parents, because soon they wouldn’t be a couple.

“That would be great.” Matt responded seamlessly, as if he had expected that to be the date. “I can pick you up at your house?” He offered.

“Um, sure.” This was weird. He didn’t seem the least bit disappointed. Maybe he was more invested in the dating thing than she thought. She had to get it out though, didn’t she? She had promised herself two things, and she wasn’t one to break a promise.

“And after that, Matt…”Alex trailed off, refocusing her breathing and hoping her voice didn’t shake. She didn’t know why it would, but she hoped just the same. “I don’t know about you, but for me, this is exhausting.” His expression changed, just a little bit, as if he sensed what was coming next. He looked…disappointed? But then it changed back, just a half second later, and Alex decided it was just a trick of the light. Either that or he was a much better actor than she ever gave him credit for.

“I don’t think this is going to work. If you’re still on board, I’m willing to give it one more go.” She hadn’t planned to say that part. Shit. “But otherwise…I think we should call it quits. Nothing’s changed. And maybe our wrists – well, my wrist –” he winced at that, and she felt bad for bringing it up, “– were wrong.” She finished, trying once again to read his face.

He was a good actor, she decided. Or, she reminded herself, he could just be unbothered by the fact that she had pretty much told him she didn’t love him and didn’t think it was possible she ever would. She was trying to puzzle out which option was more likely, but other than his momentary lapse in expression before, she didn’t have anything else to go by. Her intuition was normally good, but she was getting too many mixed signals, both from inside and out, that she couldn’t hope to figure out what her gut was telling her was the truth. In fact, her gut was doing acrobatics as it was, and Alex wasn’t sure whether the pirouettes were telling her that Matt was lying or that she had made a mistake.

“Whatever you want is fine by me. It takes two people to make a relationship work anyways.” Matt shrugged, and turned his focus back to his cobbler. Alex considered saying something more, but couldn’t find any words that would make the situation better. She was so close to saying ‘believe me, I love you’ but then, if he loved her, then wouldn’t that be painful? She was frustrated and confused and she wished that she had someone who could tell her what the hell was going on with her and her life. There was no handbook for this.

A little light bulb went off in the back of her head. Ralph. She had meant to tell him about Ralph at some point. Maybe if Matt was too reluctant to leave, she could use Ralph to push him away. It was the only good that could possibly come out of what the bastard did. It would keep Matt safe from her and her dangerous emotions, and it would keep her safe from herself and the yawning precipice that was love. That was what was wrong, Alex decided. She was on the edge of a precipice, but there was nothing strong enough to push her over, to make her fall.

Satisfied in the knowledge that it was no fault of hers that she could not fall in love, Alex followed Matt’s cue and finished her dessert, and ignored the tingling feeling in her fingers when she opened the door to her house. She didn’t know why, but tears prickled at the backs of her eyes. She didn’t care that much. Really, she didn’t!

That didn’t stop her from crying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello friends! I just wanted to let y'all know that updates, while they may not be frequent, will be coming. I love this story so much and even though the writing may not satisfy me fully, I need to get it out before it eats me alive. I hope you continue to enjoy. :)


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